This month did not go as expected, but I could not have asked for a better experience. I had gone into July hoping to write 60 poems for my poetry book, all from the point of view of the fictional persona I use to write many of my poems. She started as a character in a story that I didn’t think I could do justice to at this point. I wasn’t sure if she would be a dryad or a banshee or just a misfit human with a dark side.
I’m a bit of a misfit human with a dark side myself.
While I did write a total of 60 poems, I’m including in the count the ones I wrote for various challenges on Instagram. I’m far from being done with the book, and I’m not sure how many poems will be in it anyway.
Still, I’m counting July as a massive success in my poetry career due to my growth as a writer and a person. Thanks to my lovely community of writers on Instagram, I stepped outside of my comfort zone in many ways. I tried writing in new forms and often shed my fictional persona to write the kind of introspective poems I had shied away from, thinking they were too embarrassing.
I’ve been afraid of my own voice ever since I was about six years old and heard a tape recording of myself sounding nothing at all the way I thought I sounded in my head. When I was about twelve, someone told me I had a squeaky voice and that kept me from wanting to talk as well. (I think I’ve grown out of that, although I still don’t have what anyone would call a beautiful voice.) July saw me face this huge fear and do two audio recordings of poems, one by Anne Sexton and one of my own.
I’ve also started to crawl out from my introvert’s shell to interact more with other writers, many of whom have become my friends. I’ve considered myself a writer since I was about ten years old, but I never met another writer until I was in my mid-twenties. I wasn’t active on social media until last summer, and that was a game-changer. Not only was I inspired by the work other writers were putting out there, whether it was tweet-length stories, daily poems, or novels, but I had other people to ask for advice or just commiserate with over the difficulties of the writing process. I might not have the largest following on any of my social media accounts, but I am so grateful for the people I have connected with.
While the work I finished in July doesn’t look exactly like what I imagined ending the month with, I’m proud of myself and feel like I’m moving in the right direction.
Did you participate in Camp NaNoWriMo? What was your month like?
Michelle Wicklow 